It's Pure FUN to Learn & Use NLP

I've been reviewing my website, and my newsletters, over a period of time... and it's become laughably obvious that I sound way too serious online sometimes.

Oh, I do take the quality of my work and my business presence seriously, but I don't take life too seriously, and I don't take myself too seriously either. Life's too short for that, and by contrast to how it might seem, I tend to bring more than a few rays of sunshine and laughter and fun to just about any and every pursuit or situation. NLP is fun!

So the reason for this NLP article is to share another, playful side of me. Because I don't know if it comes across through my website or my newsletters how much fun I think it is both to learn NLP, and to LIVE it. Fun for me -- fun for my kids -- immense fun for Everyone!

Changing Perceptions is an Enormous amount of fun! It turns the world into your personal sandbox or playground!

Story #1: Fabulous Practical Jokes

So, let me take you back to one of my visits to Melbourne Australia. I've gone out to lunch on Lygon Street during one of my courses, with a large contingent of my student group, accompanied also by my good friend NLP Trainer James Tsakalos. James seems to feel it's an essential Melbourne experience to try this restaurant's "Special Hot Chocolate". I find out later on, that he actually feels it's an essential experience to be the butt of a practical joke!

So, the waiter takes a typical white cylindrical ceramic mug, places it upside down on a saucer plate, puts a teaspoon of hot chocolate on the bottom surface of the mug which is pointing upwards, then paints the top with whipped cream. Sure enough, when I lift it to my mouth, I get a moustache of whipped cream, and no more than a teaspoon of hot chocolate before I realize the mug is mostly empty. What a beautiful illusion! (And a cheap practical joke!).

It seems my life is increasingly filled with such fun moments! Yours could be too! (Just remember, the word "Gullible" is actually NOT listed in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary! Amazing!)

Story #2: How to take 30+ really annoyed people and entertain them with an NLP mirroring process!

This is a fun rant. So I hope you enjoy this Crackberry story just for giggles. For anyone who gets annoyed when strangers talk on their cellphones in front of you in public -- on speakerphone!!

One night about a month ago, I headed out to a favorite spot to grab some Dinner. I sat at the bar and ordered an appetizer. Normally -- a great place to go.

That night, however, the last 5 minutes of my fun was polluted by some guy who apparently wasn't aware of the degree to which he was offending everyone (30+ people) at the bar.

He strolls in with a large cellphone (like a Crackberry; errr, Blackberry, but everyone's so addicted to them I call them Crackberries), and it's on Speakerphone. It's clearly too much work to hold it to his ear, so he holds it to his mouth. And he's speaking LOUDLY. It's an inch from his mouth, the speaker sound is turned way up, and he's speaking loudly. Which is to say, ALL of us can hear his conversation. Not just me -- 2 seats down from him, but I'm watching EVERYONE around a rather large rectangular bar watching him. Listening to him talk to what appears to be a business partner about moving money around from here to there.

After several minutes of utter fascination with his willingness to share this ongoing conversation of his with all of us, I finally decide it's time to do something about it. So I start scanning a range of options, looking at the situation from multiple perceptual positions.

Do I ask him politely to turn it down? Common sense would indicate that anyone with half a brain would clearly know he was disturbing ALL of us. So I chose not to ask politely.

Do I get angry and yell at him? Common sense would indicate he's waiting for anyone, ANYONE, to do just that. So I chose not to get angry at him.

Instead, I figure, "when in Rome...." and I decide to explore what mirroring his behavior will do for the entire context. So I take out my cellphone, and I start alternating between pressing two buttons, that cause my phone to beep, incredibly loudly. Too loudly, it seems, for him to stay properly focused on his conversation. LOL. I can hear he & his co-hort beginning to have difficulty communicating.

After about 30 seconds of this, I look over at him, pretending to be dumbfounded, WHILE I continue pressing the buttons, and say, LOUDLY, "OH.... I'M SORRY... IS THIS DISTURBING YOUR CALL? I APOLOGIZE, I GUESS I FAILED TO ASK EVERYONE AT THE BAR IF THESE LOUD BEEPS WOULD OFFEND ANY OF YOU." And then I looked across the bar at several other groups who were already laughing at my antics, and I asked "IS MY PHONE PISSING YOU OFF??? GEE I'M SORRY... I CAN'T HELP IT.. MY FINGERS DON'T WANT TO STOP!!! CAN YOU PUT UP WITH IT FOR ANOTHER HOUR OR SO? PLEASE?"

Meanwhile the guy with the Crackberry looks over at me while his buddy's saying (on speaker) "what's going on?" And he looks at his Crackberry, pauses for a while, and ultimately says "Let me call you later."

He ends the call, and a massive round of applause erupts -- followed by not less than 3 people offering to buy me a beer loudly enough for Crackberry-guy to hear it. Meanwhile the bartenders are all "high-fiving" me.

He then chooses to save face by apologizing, and while nobody wants to hear it, I immediately ease up on my nonverbal communication and accept his apology with grace. Unfortunately none of the others at the bar really wanted to converse with him, which was their own choice to make. Finally Crackberry-guy got up and left.

I'm not quite sure how I lucked into this, but I managed to avoid an argument, prevent 30 people from lynching a guy, stop someone from disturbing me and others, get a standing ovation, get 3 free beers (turned 2 of them down!) and 4 high-fives, get him to decide to leave without further aggression.

Not a bad night, come to think about it. LOL! I see this as just an example of being able to assess a situation, consider the dynamics of the situation from multiple perspectives, and creatively find an ideal way of engaging with the scene in an optimal way, for optimal outcomes. NLP gives us so much in the way of a fabulous (and often fun) tool belt for these purposes!

Living the Life... and the NLP Attitude!

Making every situation a ripe opportunity to live life with a sense of light-heartedness and best intentions for the most possible number of people... is an immensely fun way of life. I believe that every workshop & training opportunity NEEDS to be equally fun and enjoyable. I do believe in rigorous efforts, but I believe in wrapping them with fabulous experiences whenever possible!

If you think about it... (and I know you will!)... don't you agree with me? What a great way to move through the world!

I'm often asked how I seemingly effortlessly come up with such creative angles to handling or resolving unique problem situations. I think the way in which I approach running courses encourages this sense of play and exploration, not only in terms of book knowledge but in terms of real-world behavioral situations. In other words, I think I make that sense of fun with NLP... not only contagious and adventurous, but also still as high a quality training experience as you can get anywhere!

Might you want more of a sense of adventurous fun in your own life -- while also learning how to help yourself & others to a richer, more rewarding life experience? I don't know too many people who wouldn't benefit from more of this!

In today's post, I share a sales-closing I think you'll love, and follow that with NLP skills applied to selling, including: Sensory Acuity, Sensory Awareness, Calibration, Using Suggestions to 'plant' thoughts ethically, and other NLP language patterns!

Sales is one of the absolute best applications of NLP. Yet many salespeople well-trained in traditional models haven't taken advantage of this, usually because they're skeptical of whether or not NLP would get in the way of what they're alr

If you think you know persuasion, you might be right, but what you know -- you [may be] doing wrong. Chris & Jonathan teach you how to direct people's attention to what they want. That leaves you -- to give it to them.

"I very much enjoyed your seminar. Having more comfort when I talk with people makes the rapport deeper. Even though my demo is only 90 seconds, I hold longer eye contact with more potential customers, building a sense of connection. Result? Sales of my juicer product increased 30%." -

As someone who already has public speaking and training experience, I had been looking for a course that would help me further develop my skills for a long time. Most courses either only cater for the absolute beginner, or focus on the less important aspects of speaking - where to hold your hands, how to use Powerpoint for example. Jonathan Altfeld's Speaking Ingeniously course however is different. Right from day 1, I realised I was in for something special. The massive growth both myself and other attendees experienced in our speaking skills would be hard to believe if we didn't have the DVD evidence! Jonathan's ability to train a mixed ability group is unrivaled, and on this course there were already-confident public speakers like myself, right down to people who had never spoken in public before, and even one who had a fear of public speaking! The way Jonathan trains means that everyone, regardless of their current skill level, gets massive benefits from his courses. He has mastered the hard-to-master art of training different skill levels at one time, without anyone feeling he's going too fast or too slow and it's the most effortless learning I've experienced (and among the most powerful). Who would I recommend this course to? Anyone that wants to improve their speaking skills - whether they want to speak in public or just improve their position at work (and believe me, you'll be able to negotiate more money after this course!). In my opinion, this is THE best course on speaking skills, and having researched lots of courses before I chose this one, I can guarantee you won't find the majority of this material (or have this sort of experience) anywhere else. If you want a 10 out of 10 experience, I wholeheartedly recommend Jonathan Altfeld and this course over any other.

Jon Altfeld's Knowledge Engineering Home study course is the best money on NLP I've ever spent. I've read all of the early NLP books, and most of the books in their bibliographies. I've also been to one 14-day training. To date, most NLP has been 'intellectual' and 'peicemeal' for me. Since listening to Jon's seminar and reading the transcript, I've been able move from 'knowing about' to 'knowing' how to model other people's experiences and belief systems, and with way less effort. Jon expanded on Dilts' Normalized Belief Structure. The way Jon builds and weaves this structure enabled me to understand clearly how it worked. His course indirectly set up the "NBS" as a lynchpin, integrating other aspects of NLP for me. Most of the stuff I've exposed myself to in NLP focuses on either the sensory systems or the language. This KE course has enabled me to understand how sensory-systems are integrated into language. This has me tracking people's experiences and languaging not like a 1-2-3 beginner dance instruction, but rather like keeping up with a good salsa tune! And with a partner to boot! Through the course, he leads you to using this tool in simple and dynamic ways. Using the "NBS" has enabled me to attend to, understand and track the experience of anyone I talk to. It has also enabled me to deal with people more powerfully. Two days after finishing the course, using this tool, I both defused one, and prevented another almost-guaranteed argument with my girlfriend, in the same night! This is the first NLP product that I've read and/or experienced that enables me to easily attend to, track and deal with another person's belief systems in real-time/uptime. This home study course actually puts the 'programming' in NLP.

PTPS was absolutely the best training in persuasion I've ever experienced. Chris' skills in NLP and persuasion are a compilation of the best of Richard Bandler, Kenrick Cleveland, & Michael Hall, all combined. Chris has evolved these techniques, enhanced them, and repackaged persuasion for the new millenium. Chris has tested his techniques thousands of times through the thousands of telemarketers he's managed over the years. This seminar will go down in the annuls of NLP history.

Whether you are looking to improve your speaking or to gain more of a mastery over yourself, Speaking Ingeniously is a course that will grow and stretch you beyond what you previously thought possible. With each passing day you will be amazed and inspired as you feel your skill and confidence being educed from within. In my experience Jonathan's skills as an NLP trainer are second to none, and through his masterful and outstanding techniques you will be blown away with - and left open-mouthed - at your own potential. Thank you for the great five days, I really appreciate your time and commitment to us. It was also enjoyable and memorable to spend some great time on a personal level. No doubt we will have more chances again in the future...

"KE is pure Dynamite and when used with [SoM], the combination is explosive! The tools compliment each other so well, you'll find you can not only smash a nut with a hammer but also finely craft and cut and piece back together an issue or problem with the finesse of a skilled craftsman."

"Your presentation of AI & Knowledge Engineering & how computer software systems can learn & decide was quite interesting. But using these models to then explore modelling in the NLP context was mind-blowing! It was really cool how well we were tracking beliefs by only the second day. [...] Not only could we track beliefs & language patterns "on the fly" but we could unravel their interconnections & their interactions conversationally. I thoroughly recommend your course to anyone who wants to improve their skills at tracking language patterns & modelling."

Jonathan Altfeld has been building a reputation as a prolific NLP trainer. Knowledge Engineering is unlike many standard NLP programs. There is some use of NLP patterns, language, and hypnotic installation that one would expect in an NLP training, but that is not the focus with the K.E. program. The focus of this program seems to be training people’s perceptions around understanding and influencing belief systems, and how beliefs organize into belief systems. Altfeld’s style here is distinctly different than that of many other NLP trainers. He presents the material in a logical, explicit manner, with a lot of attention focused on his audience. The material is exceptional. There is some interesting information here which builds upon Robert Dilts’ Sleight of Mouth work. Jonathan really shows off his skills as a highly interactive trainer with a lot of focus on his audience. People involved in very conscious modeling projects, of modeling performers of tasks that involve very intricate decision making, particularly where decisions involve multiple steps such as working with computer or financial systems stand to benefit from this program. Jonathan presents some comments about how belief systems operate in groups, which I haven’t seen presented in any other public NLP material. Jonathan is clearly breaking new ground here.

I recommend Jonathan's NLP Course to anyone who is interested in dramatically improving his or her rapport and communication skills. I am very impressed with Jonathan's quick and practical approach to the questions posed by his students. I have accepted the challenge to continue practicing these skills in the future, and strive to achieve Jonathan's elegance and mastery.